She recognized the voice of Jacob, one of the latest batches of human-mechanical aggregates. A smile crept, unbidden, over her face. They were such nice and keen young men, always so helpful and friendly. None of this Madam formality.
“No, we haven't turned the lights on yet. We're about to release the last batch of balloons--but listen, did you guys receive an emergency signal?”
A reply crackled in her ear. The Allion Aerospace Ltd home base was on the other side of Jupiter, and it was only thanks to the satellite orbiting Ganymede that they had any reception at all.
Then Jacob again, “Can you repeat that, Thor III?”
Eilin did.
“. . . cannot hear . . . very well . . . Heard . . . nothing here.”
Vivie interrupted, “Madam President, according to the log, it's an Allion Aerospace ID handle. From Io. Do we have any crew on the ground there?”
“Io? ISF has contracted us for a number of projects on Io.” And the International Space Force were the only ones interested in permanent settlements on the volcanic, dangerous moon. They controlled its airspace and surface, but they needed Allion technology for habitat protection. “We have non-sentient teams working to resurface the Prometheus Base dome, to measure geo-activity in a number of equatorial localities - too many to list--” Then she realized something else. Daniel and Oscar. A moment of panic. Eilin saw the two young men in her office, strong, magnificently black-skinned and prime examples of perfect men. No, it couldn't be them. She swallowed hard before continuing. “We have a team to install earthquake barriers for a new base. A tech-bot team with two aggregates, both X-class.”
“I think that's our caller, Madam President.” One of the techs, Jadie, brought up a map. The blue glow of the screen reflected in her night-black skin. “They're here, almost at the equator, about 120km or so SSW of Calico, probably within sight of this thing called Ruwa Patera--damn, I wish ISF provided better maps than this.”
Eilin nodded; ISF were so secretive where Io was concerned. “Is that an active volcano?”
“I don't think I could name anything on Io that isn't an active volcano, Madam President.”
Eilin wished the crew would stop calling her that. She wished . . .
She had sent the boys on such a dangerous mission, knowing that dangerous missions were precisely what aggregates were for, but--damn it.
Vivie shook her head. “Io's a crazy place at the best of times. I don't understand why ISF are expanding when they have enough trouble maintaining the current bases at Calico and Prometheus.”
“Vivie, tell me, is there anything we can do from here?”
“Not without bailing out of this project,” Vivie said.
Eilin shook her head; no, they couldn't do that.
Vivie continued, “I'll put a call through to base. Let them handle it--” She frowned. “Madam President, are you all right?”
“Yes--why?” But Eilin's hands were sweaty and her heart thudded, yet it would never do to let anyone know why these two men mattered so much to her. She was meant to lead the company, and not have favourites. She had not reached the top of the Allion Aerospace empire by being emotional.
After what seemed like an eternity of black fear, the earth stopped rumbling. Daniel moved gingerly inside the cabin.
It was still silent inside his head. Well, this was it, then. His assistance modules had picked a fine time to stop working, but thanks to his training, he knew what to do. He'd establish how precarious the truck's position was, secure it, call for help if necessary, and then look for Oscar--
[advice: 1. establish a safe area, 2. attempt to reconnect communication]
Ah, damn it. The routine was not dead then. And it said nothing about Oscar.
You're only a machine. A machine made for self-preservation.
The subroutine had no answer to that.
And he was going to get Oscar.
He found the control panel by touch and memory, managed to bring two viewscreens on the side of the truck back into action. They showed a murk of black volcanic dust that was slowly settling. The comm link with the ISF Calico Base remained silent.
Strangely, the screen showed the sky, where Jupiter was tinted more red than usual by the volcanic dust. His subconscious registered the word 'pretty' before it became swamped by more urgent thoughts. He needed to assess the situation.
Engage diagnostic module.
[possible scenarios: 1. volcanic ejecta has damaged the antenna, 2. communications at Calico Base are out]
There was no way he find out which option applied so he had to shove the scenario into the growing unresolved file.
His beacon of hope was that the light on the control box for Oscar's unit blinked. That meant Oscar was out there and operational, but might be in a bad state.
[flashback interrupt]
Meeting Oscar for the first time. He sat on the couch in the clinic when Daniel came in. Eilin Gunnarsson was also there, wearing her usual stern expression, in which he could never make out whether she liked him or hated him. The Iron Bitch competitors called her, but she had smiled at Daniel.
Think of him as your younger brother, she had said to him, after having introduced Oscar. And he had wanted to ask, If he is my brother, then do I ignore my programming if it conflicts with his welfare?
But he hadn't asked, and she had sat on the couch between them, and had read a story from an old, old book about a boy hitching rides on a tram in a city on a planet called Earth.
And every now and then, he would meet Oscar's eyes across the book on Eilin's lap. He had wanted to ask Eilin, If he is my brother, then who are you?
[/flashback]
He had let the subject go, but the questions still lurked in his unresolved file, compounding all his current problems.
See? That was his human part talking. And unaltered humans were irrational.
[engage decision making]
[options: 1. get Oscar myself, 2 . . . #query aborted#]
No second option, then. This truck wasn't going to move anywhere. No one else was going to get Oscar.
He checked his internal functions at the medbay, connected himself to the truck's oxygen tank to replenish his internal supplies; he boosted his blood sugar level as far as it would go. He checked his skin. Any breach in the matrix of the flexible carbon-based outer layer would let in radiation or let out heat, both of which would damage the fragile human muscle tissue underneath. When he was satisfied, he scrambled up the sloping seats, and slid open the back door to reveal the star-spotted sky. In the thin atmosphere, most of the dust had already settled. A blue aurora shimmered across the sky.
The truck had fallen into a cleft that didn't used to be there, held into place by the weight of the trailer, insubstantial though that was in its empty state. Not even half the bots had made it back to their positions on the trailer. His IR vision showed two of them ambling through the dust, and a third going around in circles, mechanisms damaged by volcanic dust.
The landscape had changed irrevocably, the ground with the neat white lines distorted.
The earthquake barriers had mostly worked themselves out of the ground, and many of the plates had buckled into a useless mess.
Someone at Calico Base was not going to be impressed. Worse, Eilin was not going to be impressed.
Thick smoke billowed out of the crack that had opened up in the ridge at the far end of the valley, the main portions of the cloud now drifting away from the building site. When he lowered himself from the truck, his sensory unit flashed a warning before his eyes. [geology unstable]
At times he really wished those modules would stop stating the flaming obvious.
“Oscar!”
Still no reply, but the locator on his wrist flashed a little faster.
Daniel ploughed through the dust, which was knee-deep in some places, checking the light on his locator . . .
Safety precautions displayed before his eyes: [stay inside, away from hot volcanic dust; it damages
mechanisms, even artificial skin]
He disengaged the module. That felt good. That felt like he was a real human.
. . . and his heat locator found an elongated shape under the debris.
He dropped to his knees and plunged both hands into the ash.
Oscar's body was limp, his clothes sugar-coated with yellow dust. The led lights on his wrist were still on, but flickering. Exposed skin wept with sores.
“Oscar!”
Of course there was no reaction. The pain would have caused Oscar's body to go into hibernation.
Daniel wriggled his arms under Oscar's knees and shoulders and carried him back to the truck. Hooked him up to the med station.
The news wasn't good. Oscar had sustained an unhealthy dose of radiation. His oxygen was low, his sugar was low, his metabolism had almost shut down, and the only thing that kept him alive was his mechanical core. Daniel did what he could, following the instructions on the medbay screen, and hoped it would be enough. Oscar needed assistance, and he needed it soon.
For that matter: why had there been no reply from Calico?
He re-entered his earlier call on the comm channel.
XRZ-25 to Calico Base. Request assistance. We have had an accident. Be careful when proceeding. The whole area is unstable.
He hated using his designation number. It was imprinted on his internal operation chips as per robotic laws. He never used it within Allion; he was never asked for it within Allion. It made him feel like a tech bot, but during his brief passage through Calico Base, he had received written instructions that he should identify himself as such.
Right now, he began to wonder if there even were people at Calico, or if the base was entirely mechanical, incapable of making decisions based on human emotions, like help.
“Utility vessel Thor III calling ISF Calico base.” Eilin spoke softly, acutely aware that Vivie and the two techs, Jadie and Moira, listened.
“Received, utility vessel Thor III, expand identification.” The voice was male, dry and emotion-less.
“We're under assignation of Allion Aerospace Ltd, currently in low orbit around Jupiter.” Eilin bit down on her irritation. Why did this prune pretend not to know who they were? Everyone in the system knew what Allion were doing, everyone knew where the Thor III was; they were probably watching her on the news right now. “This is Eilin Gunnarsson speaking, President of Allion Aerospace. I request an update on the rescue of two of our staff.”
A brief silence. “Allion Aerospace doesn't have staff on Io, according to my data.”
“We have a team at 1.22oN, 3.54oW, building an earthquake barrier consigned by ISF. They triggered an emergency beacon. We received the signal.”
A small silence.
“And you want . . . what? Rescue?”
Eilin didn't like his tone of mock surprise. “Did you receive the emergency call and have you been in contact with the team? Have you had voice contact? Did they request assistance?”
Another static-filled silence.
“Calico Base, are you still there?”
“I copy, but can you clarify, Ma'am. According to my records here, the contract for the construction site covers tech-bots. According to the info I have, the team went out the air lock without life support, in vehicles with minimum radiation protection. Are we talking about the same project? There was no human personnel with that team.”
“There are two aggregates in charge of the bots, both of them X-class. They have internal life-support.” One of the things that made aggregates so useful. That and their artificial, radiation-shielded skin. People who didn't need space suits.
“Oh.”
A small silence stretched into a bigger silence.
“Calico Base, can you confirm you have dispatched a rescue team? Allion Aerospace will cover all expenses.”
Another silence. “Can I ask you to hold? I need to talk to my supervisor.”
“Sure.” Eilin kept her voice even, but within, she seethed. What the fuck were these idiots clowning about?
Things had gotten so much worse in the last few years. After having found themselves on the wrong side during the Mars War, the International Space Force had set up as gung-ho space police on this side of the asteroid belt, ostensibly to prevent smuggling of goods and illegal arms trade, but with numerous ISF ground bases engaged in commerce, their principles were as compromised as hell. Fact was, ISF hadn't had a clear-cut charter since ISF admirals had fallen out with Earth leadership, which had accused ISF of being unreliable, prone to be influenced by empire-building nutcases. Which, in some ways, they were.
A click on the line. He had logged out.
“What the fuck?” Eilin spread her hands. “What have you guys done to upset ISF?”
Vivie shook her head, wide-eyed. “Nothing that I am aware of, Madam President. Our relationship is quite good. Sure they annoy us and the other commercial operators with their regulations, but--”
“Calico's being obtuse. More obtuse than usual. Of all the times they could choose to be difficult . . . We got people in trouble down there--”
Daniel was experienced, but Oscar was on his first assignment. She had sent them because they were the best and most suited to the hostile environment, but even they weren't indestructible. They might have mechanical parts, but they were very definitely people.
And ISF was stalling, for some reason unable, or unwilling to help.
Eilin stared out over the cloud mass, with the thousands of balloons floating by virtue of their internal heating element. They had a powered pack, but when that ran out, they would stay afloat for a number of days at the most. They couldn't abandon their post. The whole of humanity was watching this experiment, and maybe future generations would depend on technology the company was testing here.
But . . .
Daniel and Oscar.
“Vivie, how long would it take us to get there?” Stupid, stupid question.
“To Io? We'd have to pull out of the current mission.” The tone of surprise was evident in Vivie's voice.
“I know.” Not smart, not good advertisement, not with all these people watching. “But just in case we have to, how long?”
Vivie raised an eyebrow, then checked the controls. “We're already powering up for the ascent. We're at 78% right now. We could achieve maximum thrust within about two hours. Once we get going, we're eight hours out.” Totally the professional. Calm, collected. None of the crew knew who the men were. “But we can't get too close to Io.”
Eilin nodded. The Thor III was one of the most powerful ships ever built, and there was no way she would take it close enough to Io for ISF to come up with some sort of silly regulation and impound the ship, with its revolutionary fusion reactor. That engine, that technology that could lift the vessel out of Jupiter's gravity well with minimal discomfort to human passengers, was Allion's alone.
But they did have the shuttle.
XRZ-25 to Calico Base, request immediate salvage.
Daniel entered his plea into the unresponsive radio. He wished he had voice-contact. He wished he could speak to someone, hear affirmation that help was on its way.
XRZ-25 to Calico Base.
Calico Base wasn't replying. And now the truck's power was low.
Soon he would be out of oxygen, and while his mechanical parts functioned, to a degree, without, his organic parts needed oxygen to survive. He would have to go into forced hibernation, like Oscar, and that would mean his power supply would be turned off. Since it didn't seem ISF were keen to rescue him and Oscar, it would be up to Allion, who would have trouble finding him when in hibernation. And if that state lasted too long, it meant death.
Oscar wouldn't survive half as long.
XRZ-25 to Calico Base.
Daniel pressed repeat, and repeat, and repeat. He had turned off the decision-making module, because the thing went crazy if it had no clear options to consider, or all the options it suggested were as ludicrous as they were dangerous. For the first tim
e in his short life, Daniel was human. And as human, he didn't want to die. He'd been conscious for only a few years, not long enough to do all he could, to reach his full potential. There was so much more to learn, to experience. He'd never space-walked, he'd never piloted a craft, he'd never . . . taken a girl out on a date. What did people do with aggregates when they died? Did they take apart the pieces and re-create them? Did the mechanics go into someone else?
That thought made him shudder and he deliberately cut off the routines that led his thoughts in that direction. Another piece of the mechanical puzzle shut down.
And his human thoughts just . . . went around in circles; there were no decisions for him to make. There was no work to be done. This was the thing humans felt when they wanted to cry. But he couldn't do that, since his eyes weren't wet, but covered with a hard resin. He wanted to loose the anger coiled inside him, smash things up, but he couldn't do that either, so he sat, shivering, next to the med-station, holding Oscar's cold hand to his forehead.
The company had such high expectations of him, and he had failed. He had failed Eilin--
But--wait. The ground vibrated. Vehicles.
Daniel crawled over the sloping seats and opened the back door. He jumped onto the trailer, climbed on the empty crates and dialed his magnification up.
A convoy of trucks was moving over the plain towards the building site, headlights piecing the semidarkness and glimmering in occasional motes of remaining dust. The first vehicle was a heavy, armored truck with radiation shielding. A vehicle for transporting un-altered human personnel.
He jumped up onto the truck's roof, waving his arms.
Eilin stared at the image the Forthright had just sent her, an image all of seven minutes old. It came from one of Allion's spy probes, currently hanging around quietly in Europa's L5 LaGrange point, and which had, at the moment, a brilliant view of Io. The image was only in black and white, but it clearly showed the proposed base on Io outlined in white, the eight concentric rings of the earthquake barrier, some damaged. The familiar Allion truck half-hung in a crevice. Someone was on the roof.
The Cyborg Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) Page 25